


A Starting Point

by keire_ke



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-13 05:04:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12976581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/pseuds/keire_ke
Summary: The long, winding road to a starting point for Steve and Bucky, and why Valentine's Day matters.





	1. Sarah Rogers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themirrordarkly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themirrordarkly/gifts).



> Thank you Elinimate for betaing and encouraging me, and a special thank you to TheMirrorDarkly, for being so patient. This has been a supremely uncreative year for me, but that story helped me get back on track. :) I hope you enjoy it!

February is tough. The worn sleeves of Sarah's coat flare at the back of her hand and the cold bites at the stripe of exposed skin between the sweater she has underneath and the glove. She hugs the bag of groceries to her chest, as insulation against the wind, but a whiff of sweetness from within gives her pause. There are several wrinkly apples in the bag; she can smell them even over the onion and bread. They are bruised already, and the last thing she wants is to have to scrap them off the vegetables. She loosens her grip on the bag a fraction, shudders when a gust of wind makes it between the paper and her coat, but resists the urge to grip the bag tighter. You will handle this, she tells herself and keeps marching on. She is almost home.

It's so cold that her heels chime when they strike what should just be slush, sending a spray of slivers around her feet. Coupled with the fact that her breath is misting in front of her face, Sarah finds it amazing she is as comfortable walking at the speed she is walking, but then cold is a powerful motivator.

Steve should be home from school already, and he'd be hungry, or he _should_ be hungry, in any case. They survived the past few days on a thin soup boiled from scraps, so there is a part of her that wishes she came back home to find Steve hungry. Sarah despairs whenever he looks down at food and doesn't exhibit a need for it. No normal child should look down at a plateful of food and not have his mouth water, and that's a fact. Sarah has seen enough of that, and there is hardly ever a happy ending.

Thankfully there are other reasons Steve isn't hungry when he comes home these days. The Barnes boy took a liking to her Steve, and he's been kind enough to share his lunch on more than one occasion. There's a pang of shame stuttering in her throat as she thinks that; she shouldn't be counting on a strange child to feed her own son, but poor Steve can be trusted to lose his lunch money, should he get it, and she only rarely has time to prepare sandwiches for him. Tomorrow she has the day off, however, which she fully intends to spend in the kitchen. There will be sandwiches, a large pot of rich soup, and in the cold the stock will keep for weeks. She's got a sizeable package of chicken carcasses and even a thick slice of beef brisket, with enough meat on it to scrape and bake into a pie later.

That Mr. McAllister is a proper Christian man and no mistake, and Sarah will forever be in his debt. It's likely he's a bit sweet on her, but there's no harm in that: his wife is a ruddy-faced warm-hearted soul, whom he loves with all his heart, so if he smiles at Sarah a little more kindly than he does at other customers, if he gives her the bones he didn't fillet as thoroughly, that's her good luck. He's a good man, McAllister, even if he makes her heart ache for Joseph's smile, his laugh. She thinks maybe that's why she lets the Barnes boy get away with providing for Steve when she can't, why she accepts the butcher's kindness: they would have been kindred spirits, the three of them.

She makes it home slipping on the ice only twice, with her eyes nearly closed against the cold, but she doesn't fall, and the groceries are in the same condition they were when she left the store. The door is unlocked, and Sarah breathes a little easier. No steam rises from her mouth; good. The apartment is far from warm, but at least she can take the threadbare coat and the sweater underneath off, so what if it's only to exchange it for a thick flannel house dress and a shawl. It's much warmer, anyway.

She stops in her tracks when she has the shawl knotted about her shoulders. Steve is sitting on the chair by the window, staring into his lap with a puzzled frown.

"Steve, sweetheart, what's wrong?" Sarah asks, as she starts lining up the groceries on the table.

"Oh—hi ma. Nothing is wrong." He looks down at his lap again, at a square of paper. He doesn't seem sad, which is good, Sarah can't bear to see her boy sad. He's more puzzled than anything.

"Why the frown, then?"

"I got a Valentine's Day card."

"Oh," Sarah says. "Is it a nice card?"

Steve stands up, and the rim of the old sweater falls down to his bony knees. He coughs into the cushion of the rolled up sleeve and gently lies the paper square on the table.

It must be something the children have done at school, Sarah realizes immediately. There are small blobs of brown painted on the paper, surrounded by a reddish square – Sarah suspects these are meant to be chocolates in a box – and a ribbon, in bright red. Across the top "Happy Valentines' Day" is written in lovely cursive, albeit made wobbly by the inexperience of the hand holding the brush and the brush itself. The apostrophe skipped over a letter, she notes with a smile, but altogether a commendable effort. The letters are red, same as the ribbon. Inside, in that same careful, child-like script there is a poem: "Apples are Red, Your Eyes are Blue, Your Pictures are Nice, And so Are You."

"This is lovely," she says, and curls her fingers into the warmth of the shawl.

"I think it's from Bucky," Steve admits quietly, and for a moment Sarah doesn't know what to say. Steve clearly isn't sure what to think, either, but when he continues there is both quiet joy and confusion in his voice. "I didn't see him make it, he's in a different class, and he made others, I saw he made others, and when I asked he wouldn't tell me. I think he made cards for everyone in his class. Or almost everyone."

"It is a lovely card," Sarah says firmly. It is the only card Steve got, that much she can see, which is not much of a surprise. Steve doesn't make friends easily, never has. He's prickly, that boy of hers, smart as a whip, well beyond his years, and poor, which the children at large are suspicious of.

But the Barnes boy… She hasn't met this Bucky a whole lot. Steve had him over several times, but with the workload at the hospital she didn't have a chance to spend any time with them while they played. She has the impression of a smiling face with two front teeth missing, with a smile of a truly content child. There's a head of combed hair over the smile, and below it a clean shirt and hands besides. A proper boy: the Barneses clearly raised him right. Even if they are not of Christian faith, their son's company has been good for her Steve; the poor child is always so serious, Sarah's been delighted to see him smile every day.

"Are you hungry?" she asks in the meantime, and holds up an apple, not in the least surprised when Steve shakes his head.

"Bucky said he got too many sandwiches," Steve says and his little face scrunches, like he can smell the fib even now. "He gave me one of his. There was meat in it. He said he couldn't finish, so I ate it." He peers up at her, all skin and bones and earnest fire in his gaze, seeking approval perhaps, or guidance, because he has seen Sarah reject charity before, and he must realize a healthy boy would easily devour all the food his mother gave him. Steve's already too proud for his own good, much like his mother, and, much like his mother, he has met his match. Sarah may have only met young James a couple of times, briefly at that, but she got this much out of his chatter: he had a little sister. A boy who happily told stories about helping to feed an infant won't have trouble slipping a sandwich to a fellow classmate, even if the classmate was as stubborn as her Stevie.

So Sarah smiles as she lays her palms on Steve's shoulders and bends down to look him in the eye. "You listen to me now, Steve: Bucky is a good friend to you, right?"

Steve nods, a little hesitantly. "He is nice."

"Good friends share," she says firmly, though not without a pang of guilt. Pride is a fine thing, she recalls Father Jessop's words, when it guides you to better yourself, but too much pride is a sin, and a wound on the soul. "That's how you know someone cares for you, sweetheart. If they are willing to share their food with you before you're hungry, that's a sure sign they care, and there can be no shame in it." She'd have fought tooth and nail herself, but if it got food into Steve, she isn't going to say a word. Besides, the Barneses are doing well enough, and their boy is not going hungry, even when he gives half his lunch away. And frankly, if he is capable of getting Steve Rogers to take what he wants to give, well, only a truly godless soul would intervene in a small miracle.

"Why don't you invite Bucky over on Sunday?"

Steve's eyes light up.

"We can bake apple pie," she adds, and Steve beams bright like sunshine. A pound of flour… yes, she can spare this much. Won't be too sweet, and she'd have to scrape the last of the sugar, but the apples she has are tart and still firm under the surface, perfect for filling. It's been a long winter. A Valentine's Day treat was in order.


	2. Steve

"Holy fucking shit," Steve hears, just barely, over the whisper of wind in the trees. He still can't escape the giddiness inherent in hearing that voice with this much clarity, in both ears, even though he would know it – and does – half-deaf through a threadbare pillow. He knows it so well that he recognizes the tone as awe, nothing alarming, nothing that warrants a pause in the march.

Nevertheless, Steve looks behind him and cocks his head. "Bucky?"

"Look how many there are!" Bucky whispers. He's stopped moving entirely, and he stands knee-deep in the snow, head thrown back, eyes shining, impervious to the wind.

Steve frowns and looks up, at the starry sky, and has half a mind to ask what is it he's looking at here, but then he realizes. The endless black dotted with stars, clouds of them, swirls and constellations. Polaris up ahead, shining out of the tail of the little dipper. Bucky's mouth is slightly open as he takes that in, gazing up into the black like he just discovered it exists.

"You don't get much of that in New York," Steve says, still looking at Bucky's pale skin, glowing bright like the snow around them in the starlight.

"Hell."

"We got much further to go?" Steve asks of Monty, who puzzles over the map, only to hear a snort in reply.

"We're almost there." Monty pockets the map, and points down a snowy field. "Down that road, shouldn't be more than fifteen minutes."

"Down what road?" Steve asks, feeling rather dumb.

"The road." Monty keeps pointing, and maybe he has something there. Maybe. Steve squints and makes out a certain… hollowness to the space between two planes. Maybe it's a road. Who knows for sure, when everything for miles and miles is covered by enough snow to make driving impossible.

"Just don't get us lost," Steve mutters and pinches Bucky's sleeve in to get him to follow.

They trudge along the alleged road in knee-deep snow for another twenty minutes, before the road dips into a valley and between naked trees, past mounds of snow, which turn out to be a couple of cottages, a gateway to a dark but populated village. There are footprints in the snow, narrow paths from door to door, evidence of life in the stillness of the February night. There's faint music coming from a couple of houses, and slits of light are visible between heavy curtains. Steve has half a mind to let the inhabitants know they could be in danger in the event of an air raid, but since the air is not warm enough to breathe comfortably, he doubts anyone will bother bombing.

"Per the briefing there should be a school building in the village that we can use," Monty says, rolling up the map. "Anything looks like a school to anybody?"

Nothing really did, but then most houses were less houses and more mounds, whose dark, rectangular eyes peeked from under heavy eyebrows of snow. "I suppose we couldn't ask someone here," Steve says, and braces himself.

" _A vous l'honneur Cap_ ," Dernier is grinning at him, as he's wont to whenever he spies a chance to make fun of his accent.

"I don't see why I should be the one, my French—"

"You're the Captain, Captain," the Howlies, including Dernier, chorus and then erupt into a cackle.

Steve extends his middle finger in response, but since he is the Captain, he knocks on the closest door and proceeds to explain, in halting French, that they mean no harm, they are Americans soldiers, and they were told there would be shelter for the night here.

" _Oui_ ," the woman who opened the door tells him. " _Il y a une école par là. Vous pouvez passer la nuit là-bas. Il devrait y avoir bien assez de couvertures, les troupes y arrêtent parfois_."

Steve slowly runs that through again, in his head. Okay. School building, he got that. Something about troops being around? School building close. Check houses for blankets? Blankets?

" _Oui, des couvertures. Elles sont dans l'école_ ," the woman repeats, a little impatiently. She shivers, and inches the door closer to the frame. Her teeth rattle and Steve snaps to attention, thanks her and returns to the Howlies, who are, as expected, sniggering.

"Very funny," he mutters and hunches his shoulders. It's not like anyone except Dernier and Gabe has the linguistic background to appreciate the alleged spectacle.

They trudge through the snow for a few more minutes, until the narrow street gives way to a valley, formed by the town square being covered with a thick layer of snow. There are hardly any footprints here; one man, judging by the size of his shoes, crossed it recently, as the wind didn't yet smooth out the edges of the imprints. The prints veer to the right and disappear between buildings, and there is another set underneath, probably left by the same man, making its way back the way he came.

"Sarge, you coming?" Steve hears Monty ask, and turns to find Bucky staring at a building in the corner of the square, whose edge has been clipped by a bomb some time ago. Its entrance is shadowed by a thick bunch of twigs, reaching up as his as the second story window. "Wind's picking up, looks like there's more snow coming up." He points up, where the stars are now littering only a portion of the sky.

"Yeah," Bucky says, distracted. "We need more snow right about now."

The school building is tiny and they actually miss it on the first pass. It's surrounded by a grove of young birches, and covered in snow, so it's only after they find themselves back on an empty field that they decide to investigate the mound. Inside proves to deliver on the promised comfortable down-time: there is a tile stove in the corner, a faucet that, after an initial sputter, fills the basin underneath it with clear water, and a giant pile of neatly folded blankets.

"Dum Dum, go see about some firewood and get the stove hot," Bucky says automatically, before he even steps into the room. He truly has the job down to a science. Zero thought goes into the commands, and in fact Bucky managed to not remember what it was exactly he commanded on more than one occasion. "Jim, you are on bath duty, we want to have at least one fucking bucket of hot water, thank you. There's a bathroom in here, right? See if you can rig a shower. Gabe and Monty, air the blankets and exile any mouse, let me know if they'll do, then get on with laundry. Dernier, you're with me, we need to score some food."

"What about me?" Steve wants to ask, but Bucky is already turning to him, an evil gleam in his eye.

"And since Dernier and I will be busy, Cap, you gotta do the respectable things and find the local whorehouse."

And such is the military life that Steve barely even blinks, to the obvious disappointment of his asshole team. They will not have the repeat of the Paris incident to laugh at, that's for damn sure. The town has troops here on occasion, more often than not for downtime, there's going to be a whorehouse. Steve's education on the subject has been extended far in this direction. "You got it," he says, turns on his heel and walks out of the school.

Turns out he doesn't have to look far. He makes it back to the square, then, on a hunch, follows the solitary set of footprints he spotted earlier into a narrow alley, nearly walks into a flowerbed, and stops by a red door. He takes a deep breath and raises his hand to knock, when the door opens and a woman of about forty lets out a soft whistle. "Hello soldier," she croons in heavily accented English. "Looking for a good time?"

"I'm looking for… a house of ill-repute?"

The woman looks puzzled for a moment, which clues Steve in to the fact she doesn't so much speak English as has a vague inkling of its bones, and learned a few choice phrases. When she works it out, however, she breaks out into a guffaw of laughter.

"You looking for ladies of the night?" she tries again, tucking the scarf around herself and her hands under her elbows, and Steve nods. "You alone?"

"No, my squad is—" Steve waves towards the school. "There's seven of us."

The woman gives him a long look and then breaks out into a smile. "Come in."

She disappears into the house, leaving the door open a crack. Steve takes her up on the invitation, steps inside which is only marginally warmer than the outside, and waits. Upstairs there is a commotion: he hears knocking and doors opening, feet hitting carpets, hushed conversations in rapid French, uttered so quickly he can barely recognize the language. Eventually the footsteps move towards the staircase and four women descend. The youngest is maybe thirty, or thereabouts. Doesn't seem to be more than a few years older than Steve, in any case. She's yawning like she'd just woken up, and that strangely makes him think of Bucky, right as he wakes up in the morning, hair in disarray and grumpiness all over his features. They are all wrapped in flannel housecoats rather than anything more scintillating, but at this hour, in this weather, and with the forces out of the village that's to be expected.

"Good evening," he says standing at attention, and all four snigger.

"I'm Mimi," says the oldest one. She's plump and her dark eyes gleam in her face; she looks like an oil painting waiting to happen. A goddess of some sort, one who holds the household in her grasp like a goblet of wine. "This is Laura, Emilia and Amelia." Emilia is the one who let him in. The other two rub sleep out of their eyes as they stare him down.

"You speak English?" Steve asks, just to be sure.

"Well enough. Your boys gonna give us trouble?" Mimi asks, and as one the women give Steve a hard look.

"No intention of causing trouble, ma'am. Just looking for company for the night. I guarantee my men will behave."

They look at each other. Eventually Mimi nods and the women disappear upstairs, emerging within a few minutes fully dressed. Each has a basket on her arm, and from under their thick coats Steve can see hems of drab skirts of thick, warm fabric. Fair; in this weather he would hardly have bothered dressing up. They seem to be in good spirits, despite the curses they spout when the door opens and a gust of wind blows snow into their faces.

Steve offers Mimi his elbow, which is greeted with a guffaw of laughter, but a certain loosening of spirits as well. Amelia hands him a flask of rum, to guard against the cold, and Steve takes a sip, before passing it on. By the time they reach the school, which is no more than a quarter of an hour, the women have launched into a colorful retelling of last summer, which Steve is rather grateful he cannot fully understand, because his face feels so hot, were it only a little less cold he's sure he'd be walking through a puddle. It's not that he didn't spend time considering the concepts behind them, via the art medium, but the hand gestures are a little much in mixed company, if you ask him.

Their arrival at the makeshift quarters is, understandably, met with silence first, then an outburst of heartfelt laughter.

Gabe stands and warbles out a welcome, putting on an accent Steve is told is Parisian, which essentially means he can't understand a word. Apparently Parisian is slang for really fucking fast. The others, as one, whip the hats off their heads and bow, and move to push the desks aside, to make space for a long table fashioned out of the blackboard. Bucky is absent, though Dernier is throwing the last of peeled potatoes into a pot in the corner, and grinning brightly at the women, who make themselves at home. Turns out their baskets are full of bottles of wine, among other things, and what they intend is a party, which is just as well.

Steve wedges himself into a corner and watches Mimi continue her story, now in broken English, to the delight of everybody present. He lets himself relax; the stove is still only warm, but it's getting warmer by the minute, and on the makeshift fireplace Dugan and Dernier are chopping the potatoes and dropping them into a large pot, under which a fire is blazing.

The first glasses of wine are being distributed when Bucky finally shows his face. His cheeks and hands are red with the cold, and shards of ice are glistening in his hair. "You do not disappoint," he tells no one in particular when Dum Dum ladles out the stew, and the aroma of rosemary and thyme in a thick meat stew permeates the room.

"The hell have you been?" Steve asks, shouldering Bucky out of the queue for the stew. "We almost ate without you."

"Here and there." Bucky looks at the merry company and then to the side, slips his bowl under Steve's elbow and the ladle, the sneaky dickhead, then perches on a desk to eat. Steve joins him a minute later, already halfway through his portion.

Bucky's not wasting any time with the food; the stew is disappearing at an alarming rate, so that he and Steve finish at the same time, at which point Bucky drops the bowl where he sits and hops off the table. "You wanna come with?"

"You wanna take a walk now? In the snow?"

"No, I wanna get somewhere." Bucky is staring at the window, face half-hidden in the shadows, and then, slowly, he turns his head and Steve is frozen, held in place by his eyes, gleaming in the moonlight. The wine spilling freely in the room behind them, the boisterous toasts, fall away, leaving only the two of them in the entire world, and Steve doesn't really have a choice.

"Sure," he says.

They don't really sneak out; Gabe looks up from his glass and raises two fingers to his forehead in acknowledgement. Other than that the party goes on, gaining volume and cheer, and truth be told Steve kind of wants to go right back the moment they step outside, because the wall of flying shards of ice to the face hurts like a motherfucker. He trudges on through the snow, nonetheless, because Bucky's tearing through the blizzard like he's got somewhere urgent to be, and he's already late. He leads Steve through the town square and around the damaged building occupying its corner, the one guarded by a skeletal bush. The door has snow lining its frame, but someone spent some time digging into the ice, so that when Bucky pulls at the handle it opens with a piercing squeak.

Inside there is a swirl of snowflakes, carried by the breeze from the broken window, but Bucky bypasses the cavernous open area and takes the stairs with no hesitation. Steve follows, though the ominous creaking doesn't inspire confidence. He reasons he could probably jump the distance, if the worn wood gave out under his weight, but he settles for following the meandering path Bucky takes, veering to the right two steps in, and then left, his hip brushing the bannister.

They make it to the top landing without incident, and there Steve finds the atmosphere changed; it's still cold, and if he leans to the side he can see the snow the wind brought through the broken window, dispersed all over the carpet. The landing is shielded from the wind, and while it's still freezing, it's almost comfortable.

Bucky doesn't stop even then; pushes the door to the left, ushers Steve inside and closes it, turning the key in the lock.

Here is a wholly different story, Steve thinks numbly. There is a fire crackling in the stove, a narrow tiles stove with a cast-iron grill close to the floor, and a dozen candles strewn about the room. Bucky makes quick work of setting them alight, one by one, until every speck of polished metal and every gilded surface is reflecting a golden gleam. The room itself is impersonal enough to suggest this is an inn rather than a home, but there is a thick, burgundy carpet on the floor, and the boards which keep the window closed are hidden behind thick, ornate curtains.

"Buck," Steve says, very softly, and he isn't sure what he means, only that it's a question, and Bucky knows it, because his hands are trembling even as he pockets the lighter, sets a tube of paper onto a spinning record and gently lets the needle find the grove.

A faint crackling, interspersed with music, fills the room and Bucky straightens, his back towards Steve still.

"Bucky…"

"Happy Valentine's Day."

Bucky still isn't looking at him, and Steve is glad for it. Almost.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Bucky," he says, very softly… just in case. Because he almost has it. He almost believes what's in front of him. And it almost makes sense. "Does… Do you?"

"Yeah," Bucky says and then finally he turns. "It's kinda hard to admit, you know. But I thought, today's a holiday, we might as well celebrate. And… yeah. I do."

Something completely involuntary is happening with Steve's tongue, and quite possibly with his brain as well. For once in his life he's giving himself a pass for not reacting, because Bucky stands there, in the near darkness, illuminated by the flickers of candlelight and the rusty, luminescent heat emanating from the stove, with the crackling, makeshift record player stumbling over a ballad, and he stares at Steve like he's never seen anyone else worth looking at in his entire life. Would anyone, ever, have the faculties to react to such a sight?

Steve doesn't think so. But he must react, he must, because Bucky's standing before him, and god only knows how sure he is of himself, really; he stands proud, but Steve knows him, and the look in his eyes has a touch of fear in it.

So, he takes a step and – no, he looks around first, he checks; the curtains are drawn, the door is locked, the village asleep and the squad is partying with prostitutes – he steps into Bucky's arms, steps into a kiss that feels like an end of an era.

Steve has kissed a total of three people in his life: his ma, Darlene when he they were both fifteen, and Private Lorraine. He could swear until now he never thought of kissing Bucky, but now that he's doing it, he feels like he should have been. Even if he couldn't before. It's like running out the secret base in New York for the first time, outpacing a running dog and then going faster, just running, with his limbs and lungs cooperating, the asphalt unfolding under his feet smooth and wide, so wide he almost felt like he was flying. All the world is different now, all the world has changed, because he is changed, and he is here, standing on the brink of the future with all this possibility that, somehow, feels comfortable and well-worn.

Bucky snuffles, steps closer and his lips part, his nose digs into Steve's cheek as Steve's hands dig into Bucky's blue coat, pull him in closer.

When they part it's brief, a quick inhalation, before they dive in again, and then again, kissing until they are breathless.

"Wow," Bucky says eventually, his forehead pressed against Steve's. He is smiling, and the sight strikes right at Steve's knees. He hasn't smiled like this since before he left home.

"Yes," Steve echoes, and smiles back.

"I wanted…" Bucky takes a deep breath, smiles again and very gently moves his hand, so that his fingertips are against Steve's cheek. "I wanted to tell you, I wanted this, I wanted—" But then his eyes grow sad and he looks away. "I tried."

Steve frowns. "What?"

"Never mind." Bucky leans forward again, turns Steve's face and kisses him again, softly. "I have champagne, you want champagne?"

"I'm starving," Steve admits, a moment before his stomach growls. Well. He shouldn't have left while there was still food in the pot. Good thing the moment is built solid, nothing less would survive this.

"Figured." Bucky takes him by the hand and they sit on a couple of bundled up blankets in front of the stove. There is a basket tucked away next to it, from which Bucky withdraws a couple of wrinkled apples, and on the actual stove there is a small pot, so blackened with age it escaped Steve's notice entirely. Bucky peers inside and swears under his breath.

"Something gone wrong?" Steve asks, around the tart fruit.

"This isn't a fucking cooking stove, it doesn't get hot enough, but I didn't wanna to start the fire and leave it, so I thought maybe this would be enough." He reaches behind the basket and produces a silver plate with an oil lamp affixed in the middle, which he sets on the floor and places the pot on top. Whatever's inside smells pretty good, and Steve can feel his mouth watering.

"What is it?"

"Fondue."

Steve starts and stares and Bucky, the asshole, grins at him over his shoulder. He swallows the bite of his own apple and starts stirring. "Really, maybe I should apologize, but honestly I didn't have a whole lotta options. No one was dying to part with more supplies than they absolutely had to, and the guys got to eat, too. But I'm told it's good for the _ambiance_."

Military slop would have been sufficient for the _ambiance_ , Steve thinks fondly as Bucky gently stirs the fabled fondue, but it's also true that there is something about the dish that helps. It is, Steve is finding out, much more than just melted cheese with some wine and garlic. It comes with a side of fun: tiny prongs impale small slices of bread for dipping, plus champagne in delicate glasses stands at the side. "I may have dug through the kitchen, the bomb shattered almost everything, but left two glasses," Bucky says nonchalantly, balancing a piece of bread on the prongs. "The cheese is so odd though, I have eaten some questionable cheese in my life, but this…"

Steve watches the small pot and feels a touch of red creeping up his neck. This is a date, he realizes all of sudden. Which is ridiculous, he knew this was something, they _kissed_. They kissed, he thinks and the redness travels a little higher. But then it strikes him, that this is more, that he is sitting in a half-ruined inn, in a room that had a hot stove, that there is food, and wine, and that Bucky must have run around like crazy to make this happen, despite the snow, the war and circumstance. And he is still babbling about the cheese.

Steve very carefully sets the fork on the metal plate, takes Bucky's out of his hand, kisses him deeply, and continues moving forward until he has Bucky on his back on the cold floor.

The pot emits the occasional pop, as a bubble of air escapes the cheese, and Steve kisses Bucky. Outside the wind whistles in the trees, and Steve kisses Bucky. The fire crackles and spits out angry sparks, and Steve revels in the heat of Bucky's skin, loses himself in it, in the biting cold of the floor against his fingertips and the warmth of his friend's lips.

"Shit, no," Bucky says and struggles against him, pushes back. "Sorry, gimme a moment, floor's too cold."

Steve looks and laughs, and leans back, drags Bucky with him, until they are both kneeling, face-to-face. "It's beautiful," he says, softly. "Thank you."

And it really, really is. Outside, on the other side of the window that's nailed shut, it's dark, and the flicker of flames hides what Steve knows will be a destitute remnant of war in the morning, despite or perhaps because of the left-over finery. Not now. Now it smells of the burning pines, of tallow, the cheese and spice. Steve dips his nose into the hollow of Bucky's open jacket, and inhales deeply. He presses his mouth there, feels Bucky shudder, and inhales again.

Bucky kneads the collar of Steve's uniform, and the icy tips of his fingers occasionally brush his skin. It's shocking how arousing the touch is. Steve shudders and swallows nervously because… this is going somewhere. This is definitely going somewhere and it's going somewhere tonight, and Steve is honest enough to know that he is looking forward to it, god, with every breath more, but he is also a little… anxious. He wants to touch Bucky. He wants to taste him, wants to possess him, wants everything, and the want is exhilarating and suffocating all at once.

"C'mon, I wanna see if it's as good as they promised," Bucky whispers into his hair, and though Steve is, as the pulps would say, "hot and bothered", there's a profound sense of relief in him as well.

Although, and Steve is trying his hardest to be honest with himself here, what he's feeling is mostly disappointment. With the food, for being a distraction, and the freezing weather as well, because it's not like they have many options other than the floor. There's still some furniture in the room, a broken chair that someone has stashed in the corner, a bed too torn and dusty to be serviceable, and a settee without a fourth leg. On the bed there are blankets though, blankets and at least three pillows. Steve considers their options and settles for piling the bedding on the floor by the fire, stuffing the sheets with pillows and cushions, so that they can have some insulation. A thick blanket follows, because stove or no stove, the night will be brutal. He piles everything up as best he can, tucking corners and using the broken chair to erect a makeshift tent with the curtains.

When he's done there's a cozy nest taking up the corner of the room, dusty, maybe, but soft and inviting. Bucky stares at it for a moment, then swallows, as though he's nervous. "Really?" Steve asks, because it's not like Bucky's the one who's got no idea what he's doing here.

"Shut up," Bucky mutters. "Let's eat."

The fondue is… a surprise. It is supposed to be cheese and wine, but somehow it's much sharper on the tongue than the cheese Steve is used to; the spices bring out the texture and the bread, just past the peak of freshness and lightly toasted, is pleasantly crunchy against the molten, creamy mixture, complimenting it perfectly.

This is almost entirely lost on a pair of soldiers in the middle of a war, though for once it's not because they are both used to scarfing down military rations. Steve eats and hums in appreciation, but his stomach is fluttering, as he judges each bite, and how it diminishes the contents of the pot.

It's not a big pot, and right at the bottom there's the solemn event of Steve losing his virginity, which isn't something he can just pretend isn't happening.

"Hey," Bucky tells him, softly, when they scrape the bottom for last of the cheese. "Everything okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You sure?" Bucky says, with the infuriating quirk of his brow that indicates he knows perfectly well everything is not well, and also probably knows what is not well, and is this close to laughing about it.

Steve looks him dead in the eye and then rolls his eyes, because really? That's how you want to play it, asshole?

"Champagne?" Bucky pops the bottle, curses, licks the foam off his fingers and fills the glasses. "Cheers."

"Cheers," Steve echoes, and drinks, decides he doesn't much care for champagne, but drains the glass, and then he sets it aside and kisses Bucky, and keeps kissing him until he can't really be nervous anymore, can't be anything other than elated.

Bucky gasps into his mouth, arches his spine and his thighs quiver beneath Steve's hands. He quivers seemingly everywhere Steve is touching him, and his eyes… God, Steve feels his heart hammer into his throat as he looks down into Bucky's face. He knows this man, knows him to his bones, and yet this sight shakes him deeply. There's the handsome boy who turned every head when he laughed, and joked, and quoted movie lines; Steve was jealous of that boy, of his easy grace and open joy at being alive, when he had trouble keeping himself from being swallowed by the rage induced by daily life. But the boy is not all that's there; he sees the soldier, weary of the toil of war, or the mud and the rain and snow, and the merciless sun, of cruelty and death that follows them. The soldier is in every line of Bucky's face now, every efficient move, carefully planned to expend minimal amounts of energy, the eerie stillness which borders on supernatural. And more still: here, trembling under his hands, is not just that boy, nor just the soldier. What he has beneath his hands is the man who loves Steve.

Steve shivers, because while his right side is exposed to the stove, there is a draft that moves the dust in the room, and he wouldn't swear there's no snow being blown in. Bucky sits up immediately, as he always does, freezes with his fingers grasping at Steve's collar. Then he lets go. Slowly his hands go to his own throat, undo the buttons there, move down to unlace his shoes. Steve watches him undress, pile the clothes onto the broken chair, and crawl into the nest. He shudders against the cold fabrics, goosebumps raising the fine hair on his body, catches Steve's gaze and smiles.

Steve sheds his uniform as quick as he can and lowers himself into Bucky's arms.

He doesn't quite manage to articulate the jumble of thoughts occupying his mind. He doesn't even try. It's enough, for now, that he has this, that he has Bucky, that they have each other in this quiet ruin of a room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thank you to Mnemo-Ink, for the translations! :)


	3. Peggy Carter

## 1946

It is on a warm Tuesday morning that the phone rings in Peggy Carter's home. It's early, early enough that her curlers are still in her hair and her blouse is creased. Understandably, it takes her a moment to pick up the phone.

"This is Peggy Carter."

"Good morning," says a tinny voice. "I'm sorry I'm calling at this hour, but I wasn't sure when you might be home. We've never met – my name is Rebecca Barnes. I'm—I'm Bucky's sister."

Peggy opens her mouth without a plan, and manages to say nothing for a long while.

"Miss Carter?"

"Agent," she corrects reflexively.

"Sorry. Agent Carter."

"No, I'm sorry. Miss is fine. It's…" it's not nice, exactly. "Thank you for calling, Miss Barnes. How can I help you?"

"Steve's, I mean Captain Rogers' landlord wants to sell his apartment. He let us know, because—Well, he let us know there are still some things there. I was going to go with Beth and Bee – my sisters, I mean – and clean it out on Saturday. I was wondering if you wanted to join us."

Peggy stands in the middle of her room, unmoving, staring into space. Go through Steve's things? That seems… intrusive.

"Agent Carter?"

"I would love to help," she says firmly, and after Miss Barnes gives her the address puts the receiver down. Clean out Steve's apartment. Were they close enough not to consider this a breach of privacy? Peggy would be hard-pressed to answer.

Nonetheless, Saturday six a.m. finds her with her hair pinned up high and tucked under a scarf, wearing a comfortable woolen skirt and flat shoes. She goes through her morning routine as usual, one item at the time, and it is only when she has the lipstick pressed against her upper lip that she pauses and looks into the mirror. She's going to be cleaning out an apartment. The quality of her make-up won't be judged. There is mascara on her eyelashes already though, so Peggy finishes applying lipstick, steps back and gives her reflection a once-over.

A little too extravagant for house work, but she would be meeting new people today. It will do.

The tram takes her to within a couple of blocks of her destination and walks the rest of the way. It's almost summer; the days are not yet sweltering, but will be soon. The address Miss Barnes has given her is not a glamorous one; she ends up at the back door of a building which hasn't looked impressive since the first Great War, and likely won't again.

Steve lived here.

"Agent Carter?"

Peggy turns at the top of the staircase, looks down at the woman who called her name.

"Miss Barnes."

"My name is Rebecca," the woman says, and offers a sad smile. She's not much younger than Peggy, about the same height, though a touch slighter. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Peggy," Peggy says and holds out her hand. "I'm sorry about your loss."

"Thank you. Likewise." Rebecca has a firm grip and neatly manicured hands. Her dress is plain and dark, but in very good condition, and, like Peggy, she looks a little too well put-together for housework. Peggy lets go of her hand and looks up at the sidewalk, to the two girls coming their way. "My sisters, Elizabeth and Deborah."

The girls – young women, really – curtsy in unison. The youngest has the darkest hair and the brightest eyes, and looks the most like Sergeant Barnes. Peggy feels, for a moment, that she might be out of her depth here, with the family of a man she didn't know all that well, past some professional engagements, but she was invited, and… well, she doesn't really know if this is what Steve would want, but it's something she's going to do.

"Thank you for letting me know," she says honestly.

"It's no problem. I figured you'd maybe want something of Steve's."

"How did you get my number though?"

Rebecca blushes at that, to the tips of her ears. "Well, I know one of the girls who works at your office."

That is a bold-faced lie, considering the nature of Peggy's work, but Peggy isn't about to call her on it. Truth be told she is a little impressed. "If I may ask: it's been quite a while, why is the apartment only being sold now?"

"Something of a long story, from what I've heard. Steve sent enough money in advance that it wasn't until a few months ago that the landlord started thinking about getting rid of it, and then he became sick."

"It's kind of him to let you know," Peggy says, and moves to the side as Rebecca pulls out a key from her pocket and after a brief battle with the door they make their way up a wobbly staircase, past another creaking door and into a poorly lit apartment.

This is… not promising, Peggy thinks, willing herself to touch something. There's so much dust everywhere, she'd be hard-pressed to know where to start.

"Well, at least it ain't big," Elizabeth says, hands on her hips. "Didja want to scrub it down, too?"

"I'd say nah, but let's sweep at least. There's tons of dust about." Rebecca sets her purse on a shelf and starts rolling up her sleeves. "Bee, see if you can find a broom, or anyone to lend you a broom. Agent Carter—"

"Peggy is fine."

"Peggy then. Do you want to start in the bedroom?"

Bedroom was too generous a word. Peggy could, if she stretched far enough, touch her fingertips to the wall opposite while still standing on the threshold. There was a narrow bed against the wall, covered with a thin blanket, and an aged dresser. Not much to either. She starts with the bed, stripping the sheets and blankets, mostly as a stalling tactic. There's nothing personal on the bed, so she bundles the sheets and the blanket and piles it on the foot of the bed, and then she is out of excuses. The tiny window lets in just enough air to see the dust swirling when she approaches the dresser.

Like the bed, it contains the essentials. Underwear, shirts, pants, inexpertly mended socks. She moves on to the second row of drawers and discovers a box of art supplies, half-used up graphite stubs, charcoals, crumbling brown pencils and pieces of colored chalk. Near the back there is a box of watercolors, barely used. In the next drawer she finds a stack of grey paper, and a couple of notebooks. Under the notebooks there is a thick file, tied off with string. Peggy pulls it out carefully, sets it on the bed and untangles the fastening.

The first paper contains a watercolor painting of a flower; bright yellow petals, a greyish-green stem and leaves. The coloring is intricate, rich; Steve had a great sense of conveying depth with color. It's lovely.

Next is a sketch of a man in motion; the sketch is messy, smudged with quick fingers, and creased. The subject has his hands spread, head tilted downward, legs crossed at the ankles, toes of the left foot resting against the floor. Peggy smiles as she sets that one aside. Steve might protest all he wants, but he has a great sense of how dancing works.

She recognizes Rebecca in the following sketch; there is one of Elizabeth and Deborah, and a woman with dark hair and crinkles in the corners of her eyes. Mrs. Barnes, obviously. She's a handsome woman, Peggy thinks as she contemplates the sketch.

There are sketches Peggy suspects are posters; a design for a shop sign, a detail of a door. A pin-up girl, with bright yellow curls which couldn't possibly hold together longer than fifteen minutes, a handful more. A lovely sketch of a dancing couple, with the couple's eyes locked in a contest made playful by the grins on their lips. Is there a story behind this image? Was there a model? Was there a girl whom Steve watched for hours and put onto paper?

Peggy lowers the book and closes her eyes, willing the tears away.

She misses Steve. She misses him so much. She misses never actually knowing him.

"Rebecca?" she asks, getting off her knees with the file in her hand. "May I keep this?"

The three women exchange looks. "Of course," Rebecca says. "I'm sure Steve would be happy you kept them."

Peggy knots the string again and takes the file home at the end of the day. She has the watercolor of the yellow flower framed and keeps it on her bedroom wall for years.

* * *

 

## 1973

"I miss England. Thirty years I've been here," Peggy sighs into her cup, "and I have yet to find a decent cup of tea that I don't personally have to make."

"Oh, you're British, I had absolutely no idea." Across the table Rebecca Proctor takes up her own cup and sniffs it cautiously, while giving Peggy a long, unamused look. "Why is there jam in it?"

"It's preserves."

"Why is it _in_ the tea?"

"Because it's a cold February and it's delicious."

Rebecca shrugs and takes a cautious sip, takes another dubious look into the cup and sips again. She's not convinced, Peggy can see, but the taste is working its magic, as her skin begins to crinkle around her eyes, like she's hiding a smile.

And yet.

"Is everything okay?" she asks, because the faint smile around the eyes Rebecca is unusually downbeat.

"Other than my mother's funeral, you mean?"

Damn. Peggy holds the teacup fast, fingertips tightening. "Oh. I'm so sorry, Rebecca. I didn't know."

"It's alright. She was happy to go."

Peggy didn't spend more than a cumulative day with Winnifred Barnes, discounting the hours spent in the company of her children, who all carried a piece of her, but it was enough to build respect and even affection for the woman. In the small space she is afforded she mourns her passing.

"When did she pass away?"

"On Wednesday." Rebecca picks up a teaspoon and fishes for the cherries in the tea. "It's fine, really. She hated the hospital, she hated the cancer. Bee was with her when she died, and she says she smiled."

Peggy thinks of Deborah Barnes, the youngest of Barnes sister, a no-nonsense nurse. Deborah tended her bullet wound once, no questions asked and no doctor called, though with a healthy dose of what could only be described as "are you fucking kidding me".

"Your mother was a wonderful woman," Peggy says honestly. She might not have known Winifred that well, but her son and three daughters are proof enough.

"She was great," Rebecca answers her smile, and sips the tea. "We cleaned out her flat today."

"If you need any help—"

"No, it's…" Rebecca sighs deeply and picks up her handbag. The laugh lines on her face smooth out briefly. "Turns out Ma kept some of Bucky's things."

"I see," Peggy says, and thinks of Michael. It's been more than thirty years now, she's buried both her parents since, but the thought of Michael still hurts, like a bone long since healed during a thunderstorm. She'd cried when she found his medal displayed on her parents' mantle, when it was her doing the cleaning.

"It wasn't much, goodness. It's been thirty years. But some of the old books I somehow never realized Ma would never read were there. H.G. Wells, Verne, the like. Bucky devoured them." She smiles then, thinly, and rummages through the old, yellowed books in her bag. "Say what you will, I am convinced he is absolutely pissed he didn't live to see _Star Trek_."

Peggy is willing to believe. "Did you watch?"

"When Beth or my kids made me. You?"

"Mostly to annoy Howard, to be honest." Peggy appreciates Star Trek, even if she doesn't count herself as a fan. Beth Pryde, nee Barnes, on the other hand, is a legend in the neighborhood.

Rebecca isn't done yet, though. She handles a slim book carefully, as though weighing it, and finally she looks up at Peggy, the book extended over the table. "We found this."

Peggy takes the volume, gently, feeling the age in the bindings against her fingertip. It's a collection of fairy-tales by Hans Christian Andersen, with James' name penciled in carefully under… Peggy reaches for her glasses, squints and almost, almost makes out "Rogers" right on the upper edge of the title page, the name written in pencil and erased. It is old; the paper is yellow and fragile from being handled by incautious childish hands, easily opening on the most beloved stories. From there she lets the book fall open, where it must, where the bookmark is placed; a bookmark in the shape of a Valentine.

It's beautiful, elaborate and hand-made. Watercolors, if Peggy is any judge. Her son has taken up watercolors lately, she knows what to look for. The picture on the front is of a couple, a slender young man and a smiling woman, her hand on his shoulder, swept in a dance.

"Be my Valentine" the inside reads, in neat, familiar cursive.

Peggy closes the card and stares at the picture on the front. Something about it rings a bell. Something about the curves of the lines, the way the girl's skirt is flowing into a heart-shape, the line of the boy's back.

Peggy gets off her chair and opens one of the cabinets her husband lovingly refers to as memory chests. Misnomer, really, she only has the one, but in it, under random notebooks of recipes and private notes on cases, SSR and SHIELD both, there is a thick leather file, tied off with string. Peggy pulls it out carefully and sets it on the table. She has to move her cup and the kettle aside to make space, and even then the table is barely big enough to support the folder.

"I can't believe your husband let you keep this."

"I didn't really ask him," Peggy says with an impish smile. She hardly ever does ask, and when she does it is never for permission. Neither does he. It suits them both just fine.

The folder is full of old drawings, Steve's drawings. The first is a watercolor of a flower; bright yellow petals, a greyish-green stem and leaves. It spent a lot of time on her bedroom wall; years. Three different flats at least. Finally she exchanged the flower for her wedding photo, and the watercolor returned to the file. Peggy feels privileged to have it in her possession, still. She has long passed the time when anything Steve touched ached, now she is just grateful for the ability to get to know him, if only in this limited way. Steve wore his heart on his sleeve, and it turned out he also put it in his drawings, in these weird little codes Peggy thought she was beginning to decipher, with age.

She turns the page gently, mindful of the creases and tears. After the flowers there is a cat on a fire escape. After the cat there are numerous sketches, of the Barnes girls, of Bucky, of the neighborhood. Portraits of old Brooklyn and miscellaneous curiosities litter the pages: a young Rebecca on one sketch, Elizabeth and Deborah on another. A puzzled dog, a shop keeper and a woman with dark hair and crinkles in the corners of her eyes. Winnifred Barnes in her late thirties. There are laugh lines around her mouth, and a spatter of white chalk brings light into her eyes. She's—was a handsome woman. Not a surprise, with all four of her children being good looking at their worst.

Preliminary sketches and careful marquee lettering make up the next few pages, the pin-up girl whose hairdresser lacked the basic competences, a drawing or two Steve would have blushed to have discovered. Finally, she finds what she was looking for: a sketch of a dancing couple, with the couple's eyes locked, playful smiles on their lips.

Yes, this one. Peggy takes out the sheet and lays it on the table, side-by-side with the finished card.

There are some differences, naturally. The girl in the card is looking at her partner with less cheek, his handgrip is not as strong; on the card they are caught in a quiet lull in the dance, lost in one another. On the sketch they are mid-spin, caught at the tail end of a joke. Somehow that comes through loud and clear, even though the poses are so very similar. Steve was very good at what he did.

Yet the lettering in the card is not Steve's hand. Steve's letters were less… practiced for a lack of a better term. "Be my Valentine" written in old ink is a charming line; Peggy can read the affection, warmth in it, as surely as if it were spoken.

"Bucky wrote the words," Rebecca says, startling her. "I compared the handwriting to one of his letters." She's not looking at the card, intently examining the contents of her teacup instead, but then Rebecca is one of the sharpest people Peggy has ever had the pleasure to meet. "Steve made that card for one of his girls back in 1938. I think she might have been called Ginger."

The man is not Barnes, not explicitly so, but something in the shape of him makes her think of Barnes, of the eerie stillness of him that still managed to look like he was in motion. She'd thought that it was something borne from the sniper training, but clearly it was earlier. Barnes was a strange man, she'd thought, the little she'd known him. Quicksilver when the mood was high, increasingly still whenever it dipped, but blessed with the deep thrum that reverberated in whoever was near. The Commandoes rarely looked to him, busy as they were looking at Steve, but it was never that they didn't take notice. The opposite, actually. The group would arrange itself in line with their sergeant, in a way that didn't require looking. Steve, too, seemed to have been affected by the thrum, albeit in a different way.

"There's no name in it."

"No." Rebecca continues to sip her tea, waiting for something, waiting for…

"Bucky commissioned a card for a girl from Steve, filled it out without a name, and kept it," she hears herself say.

Rebecca makes a noise into her cup and Peggy thinks of all the times she'd seen Bucky and Steve together, and suddenly she is angry, at the world, at Rebecca, at Steve and Bucky.

"Why bring me this?"

"Are you angry with me?"

"Yes!" Peggy sits down heavily and takes up her tea, then stands. "I need a drink."

There's a bottle of bourbon in the kitchen. Peggy adds a splash to her cooling tea, just because, and the same to Rebecca's when she extends her cup.

"Your mother knew?"

"Define knew."

"Did she know that Steve and Bucky…"

"They weren't," Rebecca says decisively. "Bucky never said anything, the poor idiot."

"Poor idiot?"

"It wasn't necessarily easy to notice, not when he was standing next to Steve, but Bucky was a dramatic son of a bitch, not disrespect to Ma." Rebecca grins and takes a swig. "I don't know about during the war, mind, Bucky wasn't stupid enough to put things like that to paper, but I know he was busy wallowing before.

"But yeah, Ma knew Bucky was queer. Pa suspected, I think, so he wasn't overly fond of Steve, but Bucky passed muster, what with his boxing and the athletics, and when he became a soldier. It was fine with our father, I suppose, as long as he wasn't being _too_ queer."

Peggy didn't get to know George Barnes very well. George was a policeman, and disapproved of women in service, which meant her history in the army and work in SHIELD wasn't endearing her to him, though you wouldn't have known it from their brief conversations. But he seemed like the sort of man who'd suffer abnormalities, as long as they met some… nebulous criteria of conformity. He was a good man though, and he loved his son dearly.

But Bucky and Steve… well, when she thinks about it, she can't say she is surprised.

"I didn't realize," Peggy says eventually, because it's one thing to examine the old memories in retrospect, quite another to claim awareness.

"'s why I brought this up."

"Which is why, exactly?"

Rebecca looks at her and says, "One day I want that to be in the history books. That Bucky was queer. He'd have wanted it to. But I don't think now's the right time to go big. So, I figure we can start by making it an open secret, of sorts."

Peggy smiles at her, a little thin, and nods.

And then, from the depths of memory, she feels a tide coming; a swell of images, men bent over a desk, side-by-side. She stills, stares off into space, wills the images into shape.

She sees Steve, studying the maps depicting… railroads over the alps. It's mid-February 1945. Steve is wearing a coat, and Bucky is at his side, smoking. Steve turns his head slightly, reaches for the pen Bucky is making notes with – and there's the handwriting, the careful, even cursive, practiced by frequent shorthand – and plucks it from his hand. His fingers slide over Bucky's though, as the pen slips away, in a gentle caress, and Bucky's palm turns, as though chasing the shaft, until, for one second, their palms are aligned. Then Steve is lifting his hand and starts making his marks on the map, a small, content smile on his face, mirrored on Bucky's.

"I think they might have been," she says, and when Rebecca looks up at her curiously, Peggy shakes her head. "I have this memory… It's nothing, really. I didn't even blink back then. But I remember."

"You didn't blink when Steve went AWOL to find my brother?"

Peggy laughs. "No, that definitely raised a brow. But I remember something was different in February 1945. They looked at each other different. Touched each other differently."

Rebecca sits back and closes her eyes. "Right before Bucky died."

"Which might explain the swan-dive," Peggy says off-hand and is rewarded with a poignant silence.

"Yeah, I read the transcripts. Sorry." Rebecca takes a sip of tea, avoiding Peggy's eyes and the reminder that the transcript of the final conversation with Captain America has been classified information, clearly marked as such, and maybe Peggy had them in her flat briefly, but it didn't mean civilians were entitled to it. But then twenty-three-year-old Rebecca managed, through means still unknown, acquire Peggy's unlisted telephone number way back in 1946. A cabinet would have presented no obstacles.

"You probably knew him better than I did. Do you think he'd be this… dramatic?"

"Well. I'm sure he really didn't have a choice in terms of crashing, if that's what you mean, but if it was Bucky in that control room, Steve might have at least looked around for a parachute."

"If he had Bucky on this plane, he'd have landed perfectly it and hitched a ride to safety from wild penguins," Peggy mutters, with no ill will. Thirty years afford a woman plenty of perspective, after all. "He was all of twenty-six and a complete diva. Looking back at it, I wonder how Colonel Philips even let him be in charge."

"Maybe he was blinded by the stars and stripes."

"He was a grown man running around a battlefield in a comic-book costume," Peggy gripes, and then, together with Rebecca, she groans and says, "young people."

They burst out laughing.

"Will you stay for dinner?" Peggy asks.

"I can't, I'm afraid. As enchanting as your British attempts at food are, my daughter and her husband are in the middle of exams and I promised I'll take Jamie for the evening, so that they can study."

"Some other time, then."

"Oh, definitely." Rebecca gathers the card, tucks it back into the old book and carefully puts it back in her handbag. "Have a good evening, Peggy."

"You too."


	4. Gabe Jones

"Well, I'm not sure what we're after here, but Barnes sure as fuck was queer," Gabe says, and watches in delight as the director waves her hands frantically and Peggy slaps a hand over her forehead. She's still smiling though, so he has to be doing something right.

"Cut! Cut. Professor Jones, please no swearing."

"Of course. Sorry ma'am," he says, not really all that sorry.

"That's quite alright." The girl fumbles, and tries to gather herself. "Do you think you could… say it some other way?"

"Meaning?"

"The word 'queer' is considered to be, well, a slur, we don't want to stir up a controversy."

And this is just too stupid to be borne. "Ma'am, we're trying to go on record slandering a war hero. I don't think the queers are who we're gonna offend here."

The girl bristles. "I wouldn't call what we're trying to do slander."

"It's going to be, though, won't it?" Gabe adjusts his seating and coughs into his palm. "I don't see how it will go over without a huge controversy, regardless of how we verbalize it. Bucky thought of himself as queer, and didn't exactly feel bad about it, seems right to use that."

"That has been a while ago," the director tells him, gently. "It's considered offensive now."

"Last I heard there was an idea to take it back, seeing how it used to be yours, anyway. I say let's roll with 'queer' drum up a little fire there, and slide on it all the way to the finish on the distraction."

"He may have a point." Peggy says to the director.

"We want this movie to be seen by children."

"That seems unlikely," Rebecca mutters. "But yes, I agree with her, Gabriel. A word of explanation if you must use it, and go easy on the fucks as well, please. I doubt this will be shown in schools, but let's keep the pretenses."

The poor girl in charge of the production nearly faints, hearing Mrs. Proctor, the sister of Bucky Barnes himself, use the f-word. Gabe is quite literally having the time of his life here, and no mistake.

She gathers herself within a moment, and waves at her crew. "Once again, from the top. Professor Jones, you can use the word 'queer', but please with context. I don't think it will be received well, so let's at least try to minimize the damage."

"Duly noted," he says, catching Peggy's eye in the middle of a subtle roll. Kid, you have no idea.

"In your own time," the girl says, a hand snaps the clapperboard and Gabe straightens his back with a faint pop, squares his shoulders and looks into the camera.

"Sexual preference wasn't really a subject of conversation in the trenches, you understand. A soldier would get discharged if caught in the act, or even suspected. So a lot of activity went unmentioned, which was easier. Not that I'm particularly observant that way. I knew of a few soldiers who just didn't give a damn. Decent fellows most of them, and let me tell you, I know of several who met in the army and are together to this very day.

"Sergeant Barnes isn't one of them, for obvious reasons." This startles a terrified, hysterical snort out of the director. "But he was queer. Mind you, back then this was not an unusual term they used for themselves, and this I know for a fact, because we have spoken about it, in those exact terms: Sarge, I said to him, the way your eyes are wandering one could get the impression you are sweet on your fellow soldier. The word is queer, Jones, he told me then, all bravado and attitude. Looked me right in the eye and said, 'the word is queer', like it wasn't something I could take to the command to get him discharged." Gabe hangs his head and closes his eyes for a moment. Over forty years have passed and damn, he still missed that bastard. "Of course, me reporting it to the brass could very well result in me being discharged for bad-mouthing a white officer. Nineteen-forties, what an era." The director listens to him as though in a trance, and her dark curls bounce as she nods in sympathy. She must have gone to school in the sixties, Gabe thinks. She knows what he's talking about.

"Nonetheless, this is something I can't forget, to this day. Not that he wasn't terrified. He was. People forget he was all of twenty-six or seven at the time, so a kid really." Gabe has that vivid memory of Bucky, neatly-combed hair, crisp jacket, twinkle in his eye and a spring in his step, defiant to the last. He remembers being impressed, then, impressed by the bravado and swagger, but in his memory's eye he sees him as he couldn’t have seen him then: a young man in over his head, overwhelmed by the war, and putting on one hell of a show to make up for it.

"I wish I could say I clapped him on the shoulder and said it was fine with me," Gabe continues, "but I'm afraid all I mustered was a weak 'oh'. Nothing to be proud of, even at the time. He took it in stride though, and I fumbled my way to something more supportive, eventually."

"Did anyone else know?"

"His family." Gabe catches Rebecca's eye and smiles at her. "Bucky said that right away. 'My family knows, so really, who are you gonna tell, private, the brass?' He was proud of that. And I think he was itching to tell someone who was there, just to tell someone. He'd have shouted from the rooftops, if he could. He told me because—well, never mind that." It hadn't been a good day for Private Jones, the single black man in a white unit. Well. It wasn't a white unit, exactly, but somehow people never really noticed Jim Morita until they started paying attention, and even then they tended to pretend he wasn't there, so Gabe got singled out. Also because he had trouble keeping his mouth shut and didn't have the good grace to be dumb, like so many others.

And then there was Barnes. Superior officer or not, he was a white kid Gabe was comfortable with, so he maybe there was a part of him that wanted to jab someone white where it hurt, maybe he needed to feel a little better, caution be damned. So he said what he said, and Bucky confirmed it, in as many words, carried by the same wind, and also because he lived to deflate people, the jackass.

That was one of the few times in his life Gabe genuinely felt winded by emotion. After he processed and thought about it, and felt the staggering responsibility of what was given to him.

"I thought it was a bit of a shame, mind," he says to the camera. "He was a romantic at heart. Not just in that he could sweet-talk a girl, oh no. Though he had no problem there, kid had a glib tongue and knew how to wag it, plus he had the uncanny ability to find clean water, soap, and a comb wherever we went, so he looked like a movie star even during missions. But the thing that you may not know about him is that he, and I swear to God this is true, he devoured more trashy romances than the entirety of the nurse corps put together, which is incidentally where he got them from. We'd be back at camp for a few minutes, and he'd have his nose in a dog-eared paperback.

"What really stuck out though, was February 1945. Valentine's Day. We were in Paris. He had a sweetheart at the time, well, not so much had as wanted. Hard to confess to a fella in the army. Timing had to be right, near-death experience certainly wouldn't have hurt, that's pretty romantic." Gabe makes eye-contact with the camera and raises his eyebrows, just so that the future viewers are aware of his views on _romance_. "So we were recovering from a mission which was a bit of a disaster, a combination of faulty intelligence and everything that could have gone wrong going wrong, without actually going _wrong_ , and we ended up in this village on the outskirts. The brass offered it up as a vacation of sorts, to let us catch our breaths. The village was small enough that the inhabitants decided they're going to take their chance and not evacuate, though there was a giant crater south-east. It was a beautiful place. Something right off a postcard, I don't mind telling you.

"There was a school building, which, for those unfamiliar with warfare, tends to be a great barrack option – it's not too personal and you can fit the whole battalion into a building equipped with most amenities. Even if it's a little singed at the edges." This being a tiny village, the school could fit the Howling Commandos twice, at most, but details aren't the point. Gabe closes his eyes and pictures the building; Dugan by the stove, stuffing its belly with wood shavings, Monty shaking the snow out of his mustache… "Not much in terms of beds, but you learn to make do. I remember that night rather fondly, we had a hot stove, some really good French wine, real beef stew, blankets and cessation in bombing. May not sound like much, but to a soldier three years into a war it was as close to paradise as you could get." Gabe smiles at the memory, at Peggy, and Rebecca, at the future audience, too.

"And what I really remember about that night, was that Sarge wasn't there. Which was not unusual; I mean normally we'd all bunk together, being a unit with a loose approach to the chain of command, but Bucky was technically an officer, official rank be damned. It'd come in handy occasionally, like that very night, when he confiscated a box of candles, a blanket and went looking for luck.

"We had ourselves a great time that night – cards and drinking and a solid night of sleep, in picturesque French countryside," among the villagers were four middle-aged prostitutes, but that was a story for another audience. Gabe exchanged Christmas cards with Mimi until she died in 1969, and boy did that woman know how to spin a story, "but I tell you, it was nothing compared to the night Sarge must have had. When we saw him again the next morning, he was glowing like he actually got knocked up, the light coming off him was unreal.

"Not that Steve fared any better, between the—"

"Cut!"

"Shit, I'm sorry." Gabe pulls his glasses off and rubs at his temples. "It just slipped out."

"No problem, we can work around it." The director smiles at him and looks shyly at Rebecca. "Maybe one day…"

"Maybe, but not now. Enough will be implied and you can bet the army will fight it tooth and nail as it is."

"It's really hard to talk about Bucky without mentioning Cap, I'll have you know." Gabe stands and stretches his legs with a groan. He should have started jogging back in the fifties.

"We appreciate the difficulty," Rebecca tells him drily, and good god, if Barnes lived to see sixty, and got a sex-change, this would have been him to a tee. His eyebrows twitched exactly so, back when, when he found the aftermath of a party in the barracks that they had been too drunk to cover up as it happened.

Forty fucking years and Gabe has to awkwardly swallow a fucking tear at the memory.

"Back to the story, Professor," the director tells him and waves at her crew (Mitch and Michael, apparently). "Just remember—"

"No mentioning of Captain America or Steve Rogers, no excessive use of the word queer, no swearing. Got it." He takes a deep breath, waits for the clapperboard and looks up, into the camera.

"So just in case you got the wrong idea, it wasn't picture-perfect. We were a permissive bunch, the lot of us, but a lifetime of conditioning goes a long way. If it had been a lady, we'd have ribbed and laughed and high-fived. Because it wasn't, we didn't talk about it, past some awkward nods. But it was hard to escape the fact that he got back _happy_ , the kind of happy you wouldn't expect in the middle of French nowhere with war creeping out of every corner. His man was—" glowing was the right term, no shit "—clearly swept off of his feet. Which makes sense, if you think about it. They had a room to themselves, in an empty inn, and it wasn't just a country inn, this was a fancy place. This was a village just off the main road, close to Versailles, so some of the upper-class gloss spilled over."

Gabe feels his eyes mist over, as the harsh reality of math reminds him what followed, but this is not the time to recount war stories and what it feels like to lose a friend to war. Gabe's lecture next week is about the indignities and tragedies of war from a soldier's perspective. It's going to be recorded.

But this, now, this is for the romance. This is to celebrate Valentine's Day.

This is to raise a glass to Bucky and Steve, may the soft fluffy clouds of heaven spill over with twenty-year old single-malt whiskey, aged to perfection in cherry-oak barrels.

This is for you, Sarge.


	5. Rhodey

The amount of drama Rhodey has to deal with every day is unreal, and most of it culminates in an explosion. He hardly ever feels the need to watch actual movies anymore, not when he can take a quick look around his living room to achieve the same effect. Being friends with Tony Stark, what a blessing.

Tony has always been extra, but these days the curve is truly taking on some worrying shapes. He's never been particularly good at compartmentalizing, and now that he has "he killed my mom" stuck on repeat in his head, with a side-note of "and my dad, too," well, these are pretty potent thoughts. To be fair they are not all that's echoing in his skull, just most of it. Just the loudest, brightest parts, that cast sinister shadows on everything else. It's also why these days Rhodey lies awake at night, grappling with the fear that Tony's going to invent a bigger, cooler weapon, find Barnes, and say "hello. My name is Tony Stark. You killed my mother. Prepare to die," and then he's going to blow a crater in the face of the Earth big enough to be seen from space.

The thing that keeps him in the bed, other than, you know, spinal cord injury, is that he knows Tony.

The thing about Tony is that he thinks he's all rational thought, but deep down what he has is a squishy human heart, and that is already going out to Barnes, certain deeds be damned. On the other hand, Tony could never be friends with someone who robbed him of the chance to show Howard Tony had everything well in hand, so there is a part of him that will always hate Barnes, and Rhodey's resigned himself to keeping an eye out that part, especially, but Tony's more than that. He has to be.

So, the fact that the screens are still on, still running numbers side-by-side with graphic videos of torture, when Rhodey wheels himself into the lab.

There is a holographic image of a chair over the worktable, with a disturbingly life-like outline of a man strapped into it, and he is not sure how he's supposed to feel about that, either.

"If I didn't know better, I would say this looks like an electric chair," Rhodey says, rolling his hyper-slick wheelchair between the tables so that he can park next to Tony.

"That sounded suspiciously like Rhodey, I think I need to reprogram you."

"I hope you realize you are talking to yourself, because I happen to know you told FRIDAY to power off when she suggested spending the weekend elsewhere. And if there is a part of you that sounds like me, it's probably because it is me, talking to you."

"I could swear I was alone."

"You aren't." Rhodey looks at the schematic again, and shudders. He'd been briefed about Barnes, back when the files first came out. Hadn't really put much thought into his existence, because after the first few months there was no roaring rampage of revenge, no random spots of the map mysteriously disappearing in a cloud of billowing smoke. It could have been that the famous Winter Soldier simply chose to lay back and enjoy his ill-gotten spoils, and while that didn't exactly sit well with him, there were bigger issues to fry than a mercenary, even if all intel suggested that the mercenary was well into his nineties and likely an undead American hero. They had the fires of SHIELD's downfall to put out, so if one piece of it chose to extinguish itself, at least for the time being, well, the brass offered a silent hallelujah and unanimously agreed to leave it to Rogers.

Now Rhodey stares at the image on the screen: Barnes, strapped to the chair-like contraption, an outline of which hovers over Tony's worktable, in a dark basement, screaming, as Tony's simulations show numbers that typically leave the flesh broiled.

Ah, Rhodey thinks.

"It looks like he's being executed."

"I find it very suspect that you are taking his side in this."

The look Rhodey gives him is a well-rehearsed look of disapproval, exactly the kind that Tony hates getting. "I'm not taking his side, Tony."

"Really? So all that fishing for sympathy for the man who murdered my mom is what?"

"I'm playing devil's advocate."

"The purpose of devil's advocate is to accuse, not defend."

"The purpose is to introduce doubt. Which you don't really need."

"Yes, great, so he got executed after. Big deal. He's still alive, and my mom isn't."

"If you say so."

"You're a bad friend," Tony says and Rhodey closes his eyes.

"Tony," he begins, and yep, this already has a lecture feel to it. "I have done my utmost to look through what you decoded, I read all the files, and I looked at the videos. Some of them multiple times, despite the nausea. And, having done that, as your friend, I will tell you this: hurting Barnes will be a mistake that you will unequivocally and without a doubt regret."

"Made a lot of those."

"But have you ever killed a man in cold blood?"

"Technically it wouldn't have to be in _cold_ blood."

"Yes, heard that one before, too." Rhodey looks at the screen and sighs. This, too, is well-rehearsed. "This is not about sympathy, though I should tell you that I've plenty for him. And fair enough, maybe he deserves a trial, maybe prison, maybe even execution." Honestly, the last one might even be a kindness. "But even if he does, even if he is fully culpable and chose every single one of his targets himself, even then you should not be the one to do it, Tony."

"What, you're going to tell me it's not going to bring her back?"

"Do you honestly believe she'd have lived if wasn't for him?"

"That's not fair."

Life isn't fair, Rhodey wants to snap, but instead he smiles. "Pepper didn't get it either, did she."

"She gave me the look."

"You deserved it."

Nothing. Tony keeps on staring at the screen. "I'm not going to let this go," he says eventually, and Rhodey stiffens. He wheels back a couple of feet and clenches his teeth.

"No one is asking you to champion for him, Rogers has it covered. But you've got to stand down on this."

"Says who?"

"Say the superweapons you build in your spare time," Rhodey says, now with a touch of anger, hands tightening on the wheels of his chair. He loves Tony, but loving Tony does not preclude him from heading the list of people who want to smack Tony Goddamned Stark with a brick now and then. He doesn't like to admit it, but his temper is shorter now that he's no longer running every morning. "It's one or the other, you want me to sleep right and keep the secret suits—"

"They cut up his brain," Tony says. He is starting off into space, not really seeing what's on the screen in front of him.

"What?"

"Just… opened his skull, stuck needles into the brain, and shocked him till he smoked. That's how they calibrated the chair in the first place."

Rhodey says nothing.

"He didn't have a chance." Tony picks up a screwdriver and starts twirling it between his forefinger and thumb, drops it twice and when it rolls under his desk he doesn't bother picking it up. "They didn't even try converting him, just moved straight to lobotomies and electricity." His hands shake as he unwittingly reaches up to touch his temple, tug at the hair there. "And they kept doing it over and over, until they had to teach him to walk upright, and then they just kept frying the bits that weren't needed to pull the trigger. It turns out quite a few papers about brain mapping are the result of a slight ethics violation. Quite a lot of good science came out of this."

Ah, Rhodey thinks.

"What are you going to do?" he asks, warily.

"Well, I'm not going to forgive him, if that's what you mean. Or Rogers."

"I'm not asking you to. And Rogers deserves a punch in the teeth for keeping everything from you."

Tony snorts. He picks up a stylus and starts twirling it between his fingers, and half of the screen starts running simulations Rhodey isn't even trying to decipher.

He thinks he recognizes one as the fabled brain science, and a welcome sense of relief rushes through him, though anger and pity follow closely. He is not exactly sure who features as the focal point, but he's got Tony in the mix, Barnes, and a touch of Rogers, too, because… well. Boy does he know what it's like to have a friend that escapes most human norms, one that you must love regardless of sense and reason, simply because they are worth it at their core, even if parts of their brains may have been victim to everything from drugs to shutting down in self-defense.

"I may have stolen something," Tony says.

"Stolen…?"

"From the CIA lock-up. Not my fault they didn't bother catching up with the twenty-first century yet."

"Tony…" Rhodey starts and shuts up. "No, I have nothing. What did you steal?"

Tony doesn't answer, but looks to another table, on which there's a pile of dog-eared notebooks and an unassuming black backpack. Rhodey draws a total and complete blank. Doesn't seem that dangerous, or that worthwhile: the backpack is fraying in one place, is off-brand, and while the moleskins are moleskins and therefore likely cost more than Rhodey would be willing to spend on paper, they don't look to be particularly noteworthy either. They sure don't look like something containing top secret information.

"They took it off Barnes in Bucharest. That was the only noteworthy thing he had on him."

Ah, Rhodey thinks. "What was in it?"

"Notebooks."

"Just notebooks?" Rhodey wheels himself to the table, picks one up and leafs through it, then he peeks into the backpack, which is empty. "Just these? Did you read them?"

"Maybe."

Meaning yes. Rhodey opens the notebook again, then closes it and reaches for the one open on Tony's workstation. There's a recipe for fondue calligraphed lovingly onto the page, along with what seems to be a rough sketch of a room. Nothing artistic, just a rough outline of a stove, a small burner, a basket with a bottle and apples, quite quaint for a picnic, a couple of cushions and… the shield. Captain America's shield.

There are small notes surrounding the image. "It was cold" "France, Noisy-le-Roi?" "Got wine from the inn-keeper" "Valentine's Day 1945" "Steve doesn't like champagne. He drank the whole glass at once" "there were so many stars outside" and then in a more delicate hand "it was perfect".

"I figured," Rhodey says, even though he didn't, not until now. There's been a documentary he'd seen parts of as a kid, because Gabriel Jones was in it. The professor spoke of Bucky Barnes and his mystery lover, who could only have been Steve, in retrospect, and the video didn't try pretending otherwise, employing instead the cunning strategy of "we didn't say it out loud; you thought it, and it's true, but you didn't hear it from us".

"What are you going to do?" he asks, thumbing through a few more pages. Well, the brass must have been relieved to know that they made the right call, leaving Barnes alone. There are a couple of sentences about a murder every few pages, but each a confirmation of an event from a distant past, and if there is an emotion surrounding it, it's grief.

"I don't owe them anything," Tony replies sullenly, and Rhodey does not stop himself from rolling his eyes.

"Really? You want me to nag you into doing the right thing?"

"Well, I certainly can't be seen doing it out of my own free will."

"Tough luck, Tony Stank," Rhodey says, packs the notebooks into the backpack, performs a pretty cool about-turn – he's very proud of his proficiency with the wheelchair, he practiced the hell out of it! – and wheels himself out. Tony doesn't seem to notice he left, which is just as well. Rhodey rolls straight into his suite, where he parks in front of the window with a view onto the forest outside and pulls out the phone. Been ages since he had to use something that wasn't a smartphone, but he does have a degree from MIT, so it doesn't take long. He spends a moment trying to figure out what time it is, but gives up swiftly, as he has zero idea where he's calling.

Rogers picks up after the second ring. "Tony?"

"It's Rhodes," Rhodey says. "I have Barnes' backpack. Where can I send it?"

Rogers flounders for a moment, probably clenches his fists and takes a deep breath. Rhodey hears the muffled noises, indicating he covered the microphone with his hand, and then Steve's back. "I will text you the address in a couple of minutes. And then I will send a new phone. Please destroy the one you're using."

"Of course," Rhodey says.

"James… thank you." Steve doesn't say anything else, but there is an expectant silence at the end, and it's not hard to guess why.

"Look, I'm not going to make promises I can't keep, but keep the new phone close, okay? You may need it."

Rogers thanks him, and hangs up. Rhodey stays in the same position for a while, listening to the silence coming from his hand, and thinks. He should probably make sure there are no bugs in the backpack, just in case. Won't take much, CIA is not exactly Stark Industries, the bugs will be detectable, if there are any.

The phone chimes not five minutes later, with the address of a parcel locker somewhere in the heart of France. Rhodey reaches for his smartphone and gets to googling, goggles at the price estimates, and then makes the call.

"Hi," he tells the FedEx employee. "I'd like to order a courier, please."


	6. Bucky

A bird calls high above. It's heavy; Bucky hears the beating of its wings against the air, the subtle whoosh of air passing through the feathers. Probably weighs a couple of pounds. A raven, then, as there are few raptors around. He listens and the raven drops and comes in for a landing. The lush lawn rustles in the billowing air, until the bird settles, hops in place, and starts poking at the ground with its beak.

Bucky stretches out his hands, both his hands, the one of bone and skin and flesh and the one made of titanium and steel and guilt. The thick blades of grass move between his fingers, tickling one hand and sliding through the other. God, but grass smells heavenly.

"What is this, a mud mask?" Wilson stands over him, blocking the sun. His arms are crossed and he looks about as impressed as usual. "Didn't know we run a spa."

"The grass smells nice," Bucky says, not really to Wilson, because who really gives a shit about answering Wilson, it's just to say something. It's one of the lesser-known effects of cryo: there is a moment when you wake up in a void, unable to fill the darkness with even memories. That moment stretches and eventually there are clouds, paler by the minute, becoming lights glaring into your eyes. You don't know if you're sitting or standing, you're not sure what's up or down. Your legs try moving, but the floor could be over your head or under your ass, so you have no notion of where to put your feet, not that it matters, because you're not entirely sure if you still have feet, or if your whole self is confined to a narrow box behind milky glass, no sound, or smell, or touch.

None of these last, which is a mixed blessing. The last time Bucky woke after cryo the void quickly resolved to muted lights, warmth and Steve, which was so blissful it was genuinely disconcerting. All the times before he was in the chair before his proprioception returned fully, so he usually woke up to his own screams.

"Steve's looking for you," Wilson says, then, after a moment, "you're not getting up?"

Bucky smiles into the grass, and inhales deeply. One of the blades tickles his nose. "Do you want me to write out a response on a tiny piece of paper and roll it up?"

Wilson bristles, and it is audible, as if he had hackles to lift over his birdie shoulders. "I am not a carrier pigeon!"

"Sure." Bucky lifts himself up on both his arms – he has two arms again. Two! One is still made of metal, but it is light and responsive and doesn't drag his spine to the side – walks his feet forward and straightens his legs into the dog facing down pose.

Wilson rolls his eyes skywards.

"Did something happen?" Bucky asks, still facing the grass.

"Yes, he didn't see you for ten minutes, obviously."

"You're tense," Bucky says. "Do some yoga."

"Oh no. The last time you talked me into this it took me half an hour to untangle," says Sam Wilson, master of consistency, getting down on all fours and sticking his ass into the air.

"Your own fault for trying to fold your legs behind your head."

"Shut up."

They work their way through dogs, cats and warriors, and finally Bucky is back on his feet, toes wriggling in the grass. Just in time, because as soon as Wilson straightens the phone in his pockets chirps.

"Ten bucks say that's Steve, assembling the search parties," he gripes, reaching for it. "I won ten bucks."

"No, you didn't."

"See, just for that, you can find Steve on your own." Wilson extends his arms and lifts his right leg, propping the foot on his inner thigh. "And he's hiding. So good luck."

Bucky looks at the raven, which is still glaring at the worm-less ground, and then to fuck with Wilson he says, "Thank you, Sam." He leaves Wilson swaying, sputtering and plotting revenge no doubt, as Bucky makes his way to the compound.

It feels good to be in the States. Bucky's not wearing the flag, so he's not going to insist there's freedom in the air or that bald eagles sing him to sleep as he lays his head on the pillowcase of independence, because what the actual fuck, but knowing he is in the States improves his mood nonetheless.

That and the presidential pardon. He has a piece of paper saying that the President of the United States recognizes that all acts attributed to the Winter Soldier were a crime of war committed against one James Buchanan Barnes, and who is hereby declared to be not culpable for the laundry list of things he's done. Which is a surprisingly welcome mind-screw. Honestly, he would have been ecstatic to have in writing that while he is guilty as sin, and every fucking death is on his head, it is recognized that he spent the last seventy years in conditions which are an affront to human decency, so they'll let him off with a warning in recognition of time served. But no; he has a piece of paper saying he is innocent.

Which he isn't, but Bucky's smart enough not to question the legalese. Bless you, Madam President.

Now, where would he hide if he were Steve?

Nonsensical question: he wouldn't hide, he would paint his face blue, expose his cleavage, and go running through a crowded square, yelling: "I AM NOT CAPTAIN AMERICA, NEVER EVEN MET THE MAN". But suppose for a moment he wanted to be away from his friends, and not be immediately found even by that freak who always knows if he gets into a fight. What would I do, Bucky thinks. Why, then he would abstain from fighting, assuming such a miracle is even possible, and trudge softly somewhere high and remote. Bucky eyes the wall and the steel support for the vines, and proceeds to shimmy up two stories, to the one part of the roof which offers the best view of the sunset but is not easily accessible via the staircase.

"Steve," he says when he reaches the top and finds… Steve.

He finds Steve sitting on a bean bag next to a blanket spread over the lush grass covering the rooftop. The blanket is covered with small, dainty dinnerware, and a smorgasbord of foodstuffs.

Bucky can't breathe.

"I had those delivered," Steve explains. "I know it'd have been better to make it myself, but the stuff I can cook is not the sort of stuff I wanted, so I decided to order. Then I couldn't decide, so I got a bit of everything."

No shit he ordered everything, Bucky thinks, as his legs fold and he plops onto a beanbag. There are shrimps. And cubes of three different kinds of cheese. There are small fish and orange wedges wrapped in cured meat, a small pot of soup that looks thick and greasy from across the blanket, and five bottles of wine, from a deep, dark purple all the way to translucent lime-green.

Steve is looking at him earnestly, his eyes wide and hopeful and tragically sad, which is the only way he ever looks at Bucky anymore.

"What's the occasion?" Bucky asks, carefully reaching out for the orange wedge wrapped in meat. "And what's this?"

"Oh, this is prosciutto and cantaloupe."

"And in a language that I know?"

"Italian cured ham and melon."

"There we go." Bucky carefully puts the whole thing in his mouth, seeing how someone was thoughtful enough to cut it into bite-sized pieces, and chews. Steve watches him with anticipation, which a more paranoid man would take as reason to fear poisoning. Fortunately, Bucky is only mildly paranoid, which is why it took him a grand total of five minutes to push his bean bag against the high concrete wall.

The ham is slightly chewy, he needs to put effort into separating the bites, but it is delicious. The melon is balancing on the edge between firm and ripe; it is sweet, but not sticky. Bucky takes a deep breath and throws his head back, eyes closed. His goddamned nose is full of the sweet-and-salty aroma, and god almighty, it feels so good to be able to taste things.

"Buck?" Steve asks, and Bucky realizes he spaced out for a whole two minutes there.

"Sorry. I—I can taste this." He offers as explanation and reaches for another morsel, a shrimp in a crispy batter that crunches between his teeth. "There's garlic in it!"

"Taste…?"

Bucky looks up from the food, discovering that he managed to already grab a tiny bowl of what looks like minced meat with a yolk and chopped pickles in one hand, and a piece of bread in the other. Steve's looking at him like he started speaking in tongues, which is not impossible, technically: sometimes Bucky's brain pulls the emergency brake and reboots with a random set of language settings. But this exchange has been in English, he is sure.

"You didn't have that?"

Steve doesn't seem to get it.

"I can't taste or smell much a few weeks after cryo. Not that I'd have time to time it, usually, but the time before last I thought my brain was gonna explode. From fucking oatmeal." Bucky shakes his head and grins at Steve, ridiculously delighted. "Thank you."

"Oh," Steve just says and flushes a perfect pink that stirs a memory Bucky's sure he's seen from every angle already.

"It's not Valentine's Day," he blurts out, mouth full of grape and cheese.

Steve flushes more and looks up from under his eyelashes. "Well, no, but—"

"And this is not fondue."

Steve coughs a and doesn't look at Bucky as he reaches behind his beanbag and produces a tiny pot filled with something creamy and dark. He sets it in the middle, on a small tripod, and sets a candle underneath. The tripod is on a wider plate, lined with apple wedges. "It's semi-sweet chocolate," he says.

"You didn't have to," Bucky starts saying, because truly, Steve didn't have to. "I mean. It's not—"

"I wanted to," Steve says. "I know it's not… Well, I figure. Sam says you're brain damaged."

Oh, fuck you, Wilson.

"Which I figure is something of a metaphor—"

"Steve, seriously, if you can look me in the eye and say anyone calling me brain-damaged is being metaphorical, we gotta hit pause on this thing so that we can discuss how delusional you are."

Steve doesn't look him in the eye and maybe mumbles something under his breath. He has the decency to not make it intelligible.

"So this is not, you know. That." There's that faint dusting of pink again, coloring Steve's whole face. Bucky's heart thumps in his chest. "But I wanted to."

Behind his golden head the sun, well on its way to setting, is creating a golden halo, one that makes looking at Steve hurt. Or maybe it's not just the sun, maybe it is the brain-damage, but Bucky's got all kinds of feelings in his shrunken, ice-cold heart.

"Stevie," he says, and scoots off the beanbag, props his hand on the scant inch of space between steaming bits of bacon, each wrapped around a prune, and the basket of bread, bumps his nose against Steve's, recalculates his position, and kisses him.

Then he's back on the beanbag, watching Steve flush a deeper red and look back, smiling. "I thought it's not."

"Yeah, well." Bucky grabs a handful of bread, which turns out to be full of raisins – raisins! – and starts nibbling on it. Oh god, he loves bread. "Didja miss me?" He meant to add "that much", but there were raisins, and honestly, man can't be held responsible for his words over food that good.

"Didn't you?" Steve says and it has the flavor of an accusation.

"Listen, just because I kept a diary with hearts around your name don't prove shit."

"You wrote that it was perfect," Steve says hesitantly.

"And you read my fucking diaries."

"Not like you were a fucking fountain of wit at the time," Steve shoots right back, and bites his lip to hide a smile. Even with the brain damage Bucky's amusement is clearly an open book. "I didn't… read them. I swear I didn't. Rhodey just stuck a bookmark on that page."

"So Rhodes read them." Which means that Stark read them and has a copy in his computer, probably. Which… okay, Bucky isn't all happy about it, isn't going to be any time soon, but fair's fair. "It was perfect."

"I know." Steve gets up to drag his beanbag around the blanket, next to Bucky, and settles in. His shoulder is warm against Bucky's, even if it is wrapped in cotton. "I missed you."

"I missed you too," Bucky says, and his voice is barely audible.

They watch the water condense on the bottle of white wine, the one Steve explains was sent to go with the chocolate, as the sun goes down. Steve fiddles with his phone and a soft tune begins to play, something jazzy and unhurried, that goes great with fish and fruit, slightly less so with ham.

"There's a movie," Steve begins hesitantly when the shadows melt into the concrete. "About you. Rebecca and Peggy had it made."

Bucky keeps his gaze fixed on the sky. "It's on Youtube. I've seen it."

"Are you angry they made it?"

Truth is, Bucky doesn't know. He came across the video early on in his research into James Barnes, watched it twice, and felt nothing whatsoever. He recognized the men and women who spoke from the photos in the Smithsonian and his research on the web, despite the wrinkles on their faces and grey hair, but their words didn't stir anything in him. He read the comments under the video, and found nothing helpful, but nothing repulsive either. Some people were disappointed, a couple violently so, some praised the movie, one person had a work-from-home job offer that would let you earn thousands – it was an innocent time, Bucky recalls with a grimace, and the internet is a bad place – and another hundred expressing admiration and even elation in the form of personal stories. The movie had half a million views.

It wasn't until a few months after that he started remembering what they spoke of, both the condition and the night in the French countryside. By then he was a little worldlier, a little more at home in the twenty-first century, enough to be horrified about what this meant for his _reputation_. Which was ridiculous, plain and simple. It's not like it was a sex tape, that movie. Just a few interviews, cobbled together, about a boy from Brooklyn who liked other boys.

It didn't say anything about the boy Bucky loved.

"It didn't say anything about you," he says eventually. He's come to appreciate it, later still, after he watched the movie again with a firmer grasp on his sense of self. Most other sources only mentioned Captain America's best buddy, if they even bothered, but this one movie didn't ever hint there was a clown in flag pyjamas in the vicinity. That was a weird evening Bucky had, watching that again, on the small, beat-up laptop in the Bucharest apartment. This was about Bucky. This was about Bucky, and the people in the movie missed Bucky.

That was the night he knew, truly knew, that he was James Barnes, that he was real. That was the first tangible brick to hang this whole mess on. He wasn't just some bundle of drifting memories, a soul cobbled together from memories and hearsay, he wasn't Steve's imaginary friend. He wasn't adrift; he was anchored in time by family and friends.

"No. The army wouldn't let them, and I think Rebecca didn't want to at the time."

"You ever told anyone?" Bucky asks softly, because there is a part of him that still wonders, still doubts; he has that memory of a decrepit inn in the snow, but it's somewhat untethered, there's no source to back it up. As many hints as the movie dropped, those were still just hints.

Steve smiles a little and picks up his phone. The soft music stops and Steve holds out the device for Bucky to take, and as he does Steve's finger slides over it, highlighting the triangular icon in the middle.

The screen flutters with color, static and then settles on an image of Steve. He's sitting in one of the chairs in the compound's lounge, almost relaxed in a soft sweater, comfortably filling the frame. The video is bathed in soft light, much like the movie was. The same kind of lettering appears on the bottom, identifying Steve as Cpt. Steven Rogers (retired).

"Did you know that Bucky Barnes was queer?" a female voice – Natasha's – asks from behind the camera.

"I knew," Steve answers easily.

"Did it ever bother you?"

Steve makes an exasperated face. "Really? Of course it didn't bother me. Why would it bother me?"

"Anyone ever asked you that question before?" Natasha asks, and Bucky can just picture the smirk on her face.

"Thirty-seven people so far."

"And what did you tell them?"

"The same thing. The truth."

"Anyone ever asked how long have you known?"

The tiny Steve on the mobile screen shrugs. "It wasn't a secret. Bucky's family knew, so I knew as well, technically."

"Technically?"

"Somehow we never got around to talking about it."

"So when did you know for sure?"

"Mid-February 1945, in Noisy-le-Roi," Steve says with a soft smile, which takes Bucky's breath away, "Once we settled for the night in the country school, Bucky dragged me to an old inn. It wasn't in the best of shape, and it was cold, but there was fire, fondue and champagne. It was Valentine's Day, or close to." Steve looks down at his hands, then raises his gaze and stares into the camera with a faint flush. "It was our first date."

You say date, Bucky thinks, like it was something innocent, but the coy look from under your eyelashes implies something unspeakably filthy, you magnificent asshole. You learned how to give head that night, and anyone who sees this will know about it.

The video continues for a couple more minutes: Steve talks about fondue, and how he doesn't like champagne, and yes, also how awkward it was to get back to their unit in the morning. Eventually Natasha lets a pause drag, and just when it verges on the edge of being uncomfortable, she asks, "When did you know you were queer?"

And Steve on the screen looks up into the camera, smiles, and says, "I knew for sure when I kissed Bucky that Valentine's Day. I knew, because I have kissed women before, and I enjoyed it, but when I kissed him it was like… like finally understanding how things work. It's hard to explain. It was an epiphany of sorts, except instead of me realizing something, it was like everything around me suddenly clicked into place."

"That sounds rather… sentimental."

"Oh, extraordinarily so. But worth it. Entirely worth it."

"So, the last time you kissed someone really was in 1945, eh?" Natasha says, and they both break into laughter.

The video ends, and Bucky curls around the phone, counting his breaths.

"Everything all right?" Steve asks him softly, leaning in close.

"You showed this to anyone?"

"Natasha filmed it, and FRIDAY did the special effects, letters and all. But aside from that, no."

"Are you gonna?" Bucky asks, a little scared the answer might be yes, and a lot scared that the answer might be no.

"I want to." Steve leans in a little closer, so that half his weight is on Bucky's beanbag. "Public coming out is something I was thinking about. But I don't have to post the movie, I can always tweet my picks for sexiest man, or something."

"If you can that without voting for yourself, sure."

Steve makes a face, but his cheek comes to rest on Bucky's shoulder. "There's also Sam."

Better kill that bird quick, Bucky thinks. "No sense in tweeting when you have a perfectly good movie made. 'bout time that old thing had a sequel."

He feels Steve beam against his shoulder. "I thought I might send it to Fox News."

"Why?"

"It might be the only way to not have it dismissed as fake news."

Steve, Bucky rediscovers, is an asshole. But buried under that assholery there's the guy he missed even when he didn't know missing was an option, and so Bucky reaches out and takes Steve's hand.

Steve tangles their fingers together, and of course he lifts them, of course he presses a kiss to the back of Bucky's hand.

Of course Bucky blushes.

It's not much, on the grand scale. His heart hammers like it's new and untested, as he curls his hand around Steve's, but this here is a solid starting point, up on a quiet rooftop, safe, watching the sunset, surrounded by food. It's not enough, but for now it is perfect.

THE END


End file.
